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What's it like to be the head writer on ‘Star Wars: The Clone Wars’?

March 23, 2011 | 2:49
pm

Say "Star Wars" and older minds will immediately leap to Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher. Go slightly younger, and the conversation might turn to Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman. Younger still, though, and you might find that the Jedi vehicle of the moment is the animated TV series "Star Wars: The Clone Wars," which is finishing up its third season on Cartoon Network April 1.

"The great thing about doing this show is the fact that now there’s a whole new generation of 'Star Wars' fans....this whole new bunch of kids who have never even seen the films," says Christian Taylor, the newly-christened head writer on the series, whose credits include “Lost” and “Six Feet Under.” "Not to be cynical, but it’s a brilliant marketing tool. It’s also a way for these kids to access this universe and then go see the films. It’s a win-win situation which is really lovely and it’s not often that way in television as a writer."

George Lucas is fully behind the show, and Taylor says it's a challenge to work on a project that brings so many expectations and so much history to the table. "This show, and it’s a good thing, has a life. It’s going to have to end in a certain amount of time. There are very clear categories of what you can and can’t do within that world. And there are things that are frustrating. Anakin can never fight with General Grievous, for instance, and, you know, that’s fine. I think that’s actually why George [Lucas] has allowed us to go into sort of emotional stories because that’s the territory you can go in. It’s a weird, interesting way to build a show because you have an ending already out there."